December 1986: Under a coat of ice, the tower is near collapse

A storm this week deposits ice the thickness of cucumbers on the KNOM tower and its guy wires, which sag dangerously. The tower is in imminent danger of collapsing.

Tower expert Rod Ewing immediately flies in from Wasilla, Alaska to supervise Timothy Cochran and Tom Busch as they strain to keep the structure standing by carefully tightening the stretched guys, one by one. “It was close,” Timothy relates.